This invention relates to bakery products containing fructo-oligosaccharide, a method for manufacturing the same and dough for such bakery products.
Generally, for bread, flour and water are used as main materials. Dough is prepared by mixing bakers"" yeast with flour and water and fermenting the mixture. Bread is made by baking the dough. In classification, bakers"" yeast belongs to Saccharomyces crevisiae. 
Since the approval system for specific health foods started, various food materials and foods have been studied to give them healthy function.
For example, in order to improve a daily life habit such as habitual constipation, as functional food having excretion-improving functions, use of less digestive oligosaccharides is effective. As one of them, fructo-oligosaccharide is known.
Fructo-oligosaccharide is galactosylsucrose [4G-xcex2-D-galactosylsucrose, O-xcex2-D-galactopyanosyl-(1xe2x86x924)-O-xcex1-D-glucopyanosyl-(1←2)-xcex2-D-fructofuranoside], which is obtained by reacting xcex2-fructofuranosidase with lactose and sucrose.
Such fructo-oligosaccharide is also called lactoscrose (LS). It reaches the colon at the bottom of the digestive tract without being scarcely hydrolyzed by human digestive enzymes, and increases Bacillus bifidus in the intestines.
If the microflora in the human intestines is improved by taking fructo-oligosaccharide, organic acids in solid wastes increase, and decomposed products such as ammonia and sulfates decrease.
But if fructo-oligosaccharide is blended into dough in the same manner as sweeteners ordinarily used for bread, which is a principal food of humans, ferment bacilli will assimilate it during the dough fermenting step, so that fructo-oligosaccharide would not remain in the fermented dough by a sufficient amount.
Saccharides blended into bread dough are subjected to decomposition action by invertase in bakers"" yeast, and assimilated as an energy source of the yeast bacilli. Thus, it was difficult to give bread the functions of fructo-oligosaccharide by blending it into bread.
For such material as bread dough in which an eating sensation that is porous but viscous is obtained by finely adjusting the degree of proliferation of ferment bacilli, it is impossible to uniformly mix sweeteners or other additives in dough that has been fermented, without impairing the eating sensation. This is because if additives are mixed unevenly in bread dough, the adjusted dough structure might be damaged.
An object of this invention is to add fructo-oligosaccharide to bakery products such as bread so as not to impair tastes and eating sensations so that the health-improving functions of fructo-oligosaccharide will be sufficiently revealed.
According to this invention, there is provided a bakery product containing fructo-oligosaccharide wherein a mixture of fructo-oligosaccharide and flour as a major ingredient is fermented with a madre containing Saccharomyces exiguous, Lactobacillus sanfrancisco and Lactobacillus comoensis, and the dough thus obtained is baked.
For such a bakery product, the invertase activity is moderate while the madre containing Saccharomyces exiguous, Lactobacillus sanfrancisco and Lactobacillus comoensis performs the fermenting action, so that during the dough manufacturing step, it will not positively assimilate fructo-oligosaccharide.
The inventors conducted the following studies about the assimilation of fructo-oligosaccharide in microbial consortia containing this new kind of bacillus.
Since if lactobacilli alone is used, neither Lactobacillus comoensis nor Lactobacillus sanfrancisco assimilate lactose or sucrose, it is considered that neither decomposition nor assimilation of fructo-oligosaccharide will occur. Also, as for yeast, it is considered that Saccharomyces exiguus is slow in the consumption of sugar compared with saccharomyces cerevisiae, which is an ordinary bakers"" yeast, and thus slow to decompose fructo-oligosaccharide. Further, the primary reason is considered to be that because during mix-cultivation of yeast and lactobacilli, the activity of the yeast is suppressed by the acid of lactobacilli, if there exists sugar, which preferentially assimilate, does not assimilate so much fructo-oligosaccharide which is low in the priority order of assimilation.
With the bakery product using the above madre, it is possible to make the fructo-oligosaccharide added during mixing of materials remain (by e.g. 50% or over). Thus, the bakery product improves daily life habits such as habitual constipation by promoting proliferation of Bacillus bifidus in the intestines of a person who eats it, and promoting excretion.
As bakery products in which fructo-oligosaccharide remains, croissant, panettone (also called Italian cake), and cookies can be cited as representative examples.
Also, in order to solve the same problems as above, according to the present invention, there is also provided a method of manufacturing a bakery product containing fructo-oligosaccharide, comprising the steps of mixing flour, water and madre containing Saccharomyces exiguus, Lactobacillus sanfrancisco and Lactobacillus comoensis, preparing dough by fermenting the mixture, and baking this dough.
In the method of manufacturing the bakery product of this invention, a large part of the fructo-oligosaccharide added during the manufacturing steps remains in the dough. Thus, by baking the dough, it is possible to manufacture a bakery product having the functions of fructo-oligosaccharide.
Also, in order to solve the problems described above, according to this invention, there is provided a dough for bakery products containing fructo-oligosaccharide wherein a mixture of fructo-oligosaccharide and flour as a major ingredient is fermented with a madre containing Saccharomyces exiguus, Lactobacillus sanfrancisco and Lactobacillus comoensis. 
With such a dough for bakery products of this invention, because the invertase activity is moderate while the madre carries out the fermenting action, most part of the added fructo-oligosaccharide remains. Thus, the dough using the above madre reveals the health-improving functions of the fructo-oligosaccharide.
Other features and objects of the present invention will become apparent from the following description made with reference to the accompanying drawings, in which: